This article has the gist of a few things I have been reading the last few days:

"If heavy rain had fallen in Tokyo on March 14 or March 15, the capital could have experienced the same severe spikes in radiation that areas northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered, says the author of a new study.

“There was a period when quite a high concentration went over Tokyo, but it didn’t rain,” Norwegian scientist Andreas Stohl told Nature News. “It could have been much worse.”

Mr. Stohl is the author of a new analysis that contends the Fukushima Daiichi disaster released more than twice as much cesium-137 as the Japanese government has estimated.

The study estimates that the Fukushima accident after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami released 3.5 times 10 to the 16th power becquerels of cesium-137, the main radioactive substance of concern, compared to the Japanese estimate in June of 1.5 times 10 to the 16th power becquerels. However, the error bands on both estimates are wide.

Mr. Stohl also finds that the cesium-137 emissions suddenly fell on March 19, after the Tokyo Fire Department’s Hyper Rescue Squad sprayed water on the spent-fuel pool at Reactor No. 4.

That suggests No. 4 was responsible for significant radiation release, says Mr. Stohl, contrary to Japanese government accounts that the fuel rods in the pool weren’t damaged.

Mr. Stohl’s paper says the highest emissions occurred on March 14-15, and at the same time winds transported these emissions over Japan. Rain or snow on those days in places such as Iitate, northwest of the plant, caused those areas to suffer from high radiation on the ground, and some were later evacuated indefinitely.

If it had rained in Tokyo those days, “a disastrous scenario … in the major population centers would have been possible,” the paper says."

What this means, if it's true of the case, and signs point to this report being right, it means that the gamble all who stayed in Tokyo took was a much bigger gamble than previously known. We were at the whim of the weather. Just writing these words makes my head shake at the irony of it. I truly thought I was making an informed decision in those days back when I was posting here like a madman. By all accounts, we should've got the hell out. Well, at least God and the weather looked down on us in a kindly light.

Again, it seems a large part of the discrepancy lies in the gov't underestimating the impact of the spent fuel rods near reactor number 4, and largely ignoring them for too long while concentrating on the 3 reactors.

And, if I may risk repeating myself, spent fuel rods are the hidden danger for plants all over the world. Permanent storage facilities in most places filled up long ago, which means spent fuel rods are kept essentially permanently in temporary storage for a lack of a better place to put them. This info I found below explains it better:

When the spent fuel rods are removed from the reactor core, they are extremely hot and must be cooled down. Most nuclear power plants have a temporary storage pool next to the reactor. The spent rods are placed in the pool, where they can cool down. The pool is not filled with ordinary water but with boric acid, which helps to absorb some of the radiation given off by the radioactive nuclei inside the spent rods. The spent fuel rods are supposed to stay in the pool for only about 6 months, but, because there is no permanent storage site, they often stay there for years. Many power plants have had to enlarge their pools to make room for more rods. As pools fill, there are major problems. If the rods are placed too close together, the remaining nuclear fuel could go critical, starting a nuclear chain reaction. Thus, the rods must be monitored and it is very important that the pools do not become too crowded. Also, as an additional safety measure, neutron-absorbing materials similar to those used in control rods are placed amongst the fuel rods. Permanent disposal of the spent fuel is becoming more important as the pools become more and more crowded.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

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